Managing the white space...

HALLIE EPHRON: I know what writing is about. Evoking images. Expressing voice. Mining the sense. Words are our tools... right?

And yet I often find myself paying attention to white space.

Where to put a paragraph break (carriage return), sometimes just to give the reader a break so the page doesn’t seem dense and impenetrable. Or where to place a scene break (double carriage return) where the point of view or the time or the setting changes.

Readers glide over the middle of paragraphs and sentences; they land hard on beginnings and endings. So I also think about where to put key information.

If it’s a red herring that I’m planting, I might put it in the middle of a paragraph. Deliberately making it harder to spot. But if it’s an important and I want the reader to notice, then I make sure it’s at the start or the end of a paragraph.

If it’s more than that, something which dramatically changes the emotional valance (for instance, the narrator’s suddenly feels afraid or wary), I might put it on a line all by itself.

That’s when she noticed. Water dripped from the ceiling.

Do you think about managing the white space in your novels?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: What a great topic, Hallie!

It’s true, I think a lot about white space, along with paragraph and sentence length. It’s all part of creating a reader experience that feels as if its actually happening in real life, and to make them forget that everything - emotions, environment, people - are only words on a page (or a screen, to be modern.)

I use many of the same techniques you do, and I love, love, love the single solitary sentence for emphasis.

I started a chapter in one of my books with a single swear word. The last sentence of the previous chapter had Russ stepping into a woodchuck hole and falling backward, with an audible “snap” of his tibia. Then the reader turns the page and sees:

“F—!”

One of the few times my mom didn’t ding me for using the F word in a manuscript!

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m always in awe of the way you break things down, Hallie. That’s what makes you such a good teacher.

My management of space seems to be much more intuitive, which makes sense since I don’t think about beats and acts and outlines either. Though I do bury clues and red herrings, as you suggested, and also open and close with important information.

One thing I’ve gotten better at I think is ending chapters with something that I hope will urge a reader forward. Not crazy, hanging hooks, but little bits that should make someone want to read another chapter. Here’s an example from the end of chapter two in A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS:

“We were wondering,” Miss Gloria said, “whether you’d whisk us on a little tour of Old Town before dessert? Maybe we could even drive by the scene of the fire?”
All three faces looked so wistful and hopeful, I couldn’t say no. Besides, I was curious too.

HALLIE: I call that a “hook-and-grab structure” - where the ending of one scene (or chapter) provides a hook that gets grabbed by the opening of the next scene (or chapter). 

You see it all the time in movies. A telephone rings and the scene fades to black; the next scene opens with someone (somewhere else) answering a phone. A scene ends with a door closing/next one opens with a door opening. 

It’s so obvious when you start to notice.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yup, all of this. How the book looks is so pivotal, and it's a way for the author to give the reader a roadmap to the emotion and suspense of the book. Pacing. And also a bit of misdirection. 

Yes, exactly, the ol’ list trick, where the key is in the middle. The forest for the trees, right? We were being totally fair–but we made you look the other way. The author used… sleight of words.

Chapter endings, too, where the pause is built in. How do we get the reader to turn the page, and what will be going on in that white space in the readers’ brains? It should be different, depending. Hook and grab, absolutely. Or...a moral question or philosophy. Or quiet foreshadowing.

For instance: END of Chapter 5

“I hope you won’t be mad,” Bree finally said. She curled her fingers around the stem of her wineglass. “I have a confession to make.”

Beginning of Chapter 6

“Confession?” Alyssa stepped back from the center island, caught herself looking at the shiny knives stabbed into the wooden rack on the drainboard, then, embarrassed, actively didn’t look at the knives. Trapped in a kitchen with a stranger was not the best prescription for good outcomes. She imagined the explanation she’d have to give to the police after whatever horrific thing that was about to happen actually happened. If she were alive to tell it. She could imagine the headlines. Idiotic suburban housewife invites . . .

END of Chapter 6

The refrigerator motor kicked in, its hum seeming louder than usual, and the red light from the alarm system blinked reassuringly from the panel on the wall. Alyssa stared out into the night, and watched a wide-winged moth flutter into one of the outside security lights, frantic and needy and throwing itself into the irresistible and lethal brightness.

RHYS BOWEN: This topic took me by surprise as this is something I’ve never thought about. Now I’ve got one more thing to obsess over!

I am only aware when I’ve had my heroine Molly being introspective for too long and I see a big block of text on the page that needs breaking up. 

I am aware also that today’s reader is used to TV with 90 seconds before the scene changes. I don’t write like that but I am aware of the need for pace and switching from dialogue to description to action to make sure the reader is being kept engaged. 

But mostly I just write and then go back to tweak if necessary. If I’m writing an exciting moment I plunge ahead then go over it again to fill in details of setting etc.

I do try to end chapters on a line that provides suspense or makes the reader think.

JENN McKINLAY: Oh, dear. I’m with Rhys. I have never thought about the white space – not once, not ever. And now it’s all I’ll be thinking about. Thanks, Hallie!!! LOL. 

I think it’s just one of those things where I let my instincts take over. If I want to emphasize a line I do. If I’m hiding a clue, I bury it in an action packed scene. I personally find large blocks of text daunting, so I don’t write them.

Fascinating topic. I love reading everyone’s answers!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hallie, this is so interesting. I do all of these things, but I never thought of it as "white space." I just want to keep things moving, and as much as I like long sentences, I know that if you put too many of them together it's hard for a reader to stay focused. But too many short choppy sentences is annoying, so it's all about balance.

And I always use the "hook-and-grab" in my scenes, but I had no idea that was what it was called. A lot of this seems to be instinctive–I just know when I have to cut the action or the dialogue in order to keep the tension up and keep the reader wanting to turn the pages.

HALLIE: So, for you as a reader, do you notice the white space? Does it bother you when a page is one big block of text? Do you notice chapter endings that make you want to go on to start reading the next chapter??

What I'm Writing by Jenn McKinlay

First, the winner of Ellen Byron's HERE COMES THE BODY is Judy! Please email Ellen at: ellenbyronla at outlook dot com

Jenn McKinlay: I think it might be easier to ask me what I'm not writing. It feels like my deadlines seem to stack up no matter how hard I try to stay ahead of them. So here's what's happening...

We are 45 days from the release of SUMMER READING on MAY 16th! I am in a world of promo writing, which includes articles for Barnes & Noble, Writer's Digest, and Debbie Macomber's Magazine. I also have ten different Q&A's to answer and a seemingly endless number of blog posts to craft. I appreciate the opportunities--I do!--but sometimes it's A LOT. 

On the upside, SUMMER READING got a STARRED REVIEW in Booklist, so I'm very giddy (and relieved) about that!

BUY NOW

I finished the page proofs for SUGAR PLUM POISONED and just turned them in a few minutes ago. YAY!

OCT 2023

Lastly, I'm writing the first draft of my next women's fiction romcom LOVE AT FIRST BOOK that was due a few weeks ago but whose resolution is eluding me. I feel like I am writing the book without an ending. Ugh. Truly, for me the plotter this is maddening.

I have no snippet to share at the moment because I am gassed. But I do have a question for you, Reds and Readers! What online promotional items draw you to an author's work? Blog posts? Q&A's? Podcasts? Memes? Time is such a finite commodity, I'm trying to figure out the best place to expend my energy. Any input welcome!

What We're Writing Week - Julia Tapdances

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: We all know many writers are self described as pantsers - composing without outlines to guide them. I prefer the term writing organically, because that's how it feels to me: one character or event leads to another and so on and so forth until four years later soon you have a novel.

 

But whether one writes "like driving at night in the fog," as E.L. Doctrow said, or meticulously plans and plots every twist and tune in advance, every writer wrestles with the same weird and magical process: taking an idea and turning it into a story. 

 

Maybe the idea is the world's best logline: Jurassic Park, except with sharks (MEG, by Steve Alton.)

 

Maybe the idea is an amazing character: a confused teenager with Asperger's Syndrome (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.)

 

Maybe the idea is a totally out-of-the-world premise: What if people and literary characters could move in and out of books in a Great Britain still fighting the Crimean War in the 21st century? (The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde.)

 

 

 

Great ideas are all around us.  Heck, I've produced a dozen brilliant business ideas in the past decades that only fail because 1) I have no idea how to implement them and 2) I tend to forget them immediately after telling one of my kids about, say, a service that rents dogs to stressed people.

 

 

 

The jump between having an idea and having a story involves speculation, pushing and prodding the facts, research, stretching the idea like Silly Putty with a picture pressed into it, weighing what's interesting and will open up new avenues for exploration, and what, instead, is a dead end. For some writers, this messy process takes longer than actually producing the words that make up the manuscript.

 

So now I have to confess that I'm not, at the moment, talking about what I'm doing with AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY. What I'm talking about is Make Your Own Murder, an event I'm taking part in - right now, if you're reading this after 1pm EDT! - at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Maine campus in Portland. It's the baying crowd eager-to-learn attendees versus three mystery authors: me, Kate Flora, and Richard Cass. We'll be taking suggestions from the crowd for plot ideas, setting, and characters, and from that, we're supposed to spin out a story synopsis  - within two hours. 

 

Since we set our plows in different fields - I write traditional, Kate is doing the Joe Burgess police procedurals, and Dick is well-known for his noirish private eye series about jazzman Elder Darrow - it's going to be very interesting to see how we work when harnessed together. I'll let you all know how it went in the comments later this afternoon (how much later depends on whether we go out for drinks afterwards...)

 

Do you have experience spinning a single idea (or two) into story gold, dear readers? And have you ever seen/ participated in an "authors making $#%! up on the fly" event?

JULIA: I'm finally home at 5pm, and I'm utterly wiped out! Dick and Kate and I had so much fun, and the almost-overflowing crowd did as well, with lots and lots of great suggestions coming from the audience, back-and-forth about how and why authors make certain decisions about character, setting, motivation and plot lines, and (very flattering to the three of us) lots of book sales through Maine fave Kelly's Books To Go. 

We settled on, I think, several characters based on names and occupations the audience had written down. We drew names first, then settings, because we all agreed where the story was taking place was the next more important thing to who was in it. We decided on the Moosehead Lake region (featuring a foggy swamp) populated by an elegant antiques dealer, a judge, a new-age spiritual guru (and con man,) a wastewater plant supervisor, a clinical social worker, a Finnish-American pathologist and a Mi'kmac trout farmer/Maine guide. 

Over the course of two hours (less, really, with all the asides) we showed the audience how the sausage was made. We killed off the sewage treatment guy first, and then changed the social worker from the detective to the second victim. We decided the antiques dealer was in it with the "shaman," providing fake Indian relics to sell, and later decided she was married to the judge, and having an affair with her partner in crime.

The pathologist went from being a possible killer to the protagonist, as she tried to discover the parent who abandoned her when she was an infant. Surprise, it was the judge! The big action sequence at the end was when she saved the judge from the real killer...

his wife, the antiques dealer, who was trying to off him for his money. The only thing we didn't get to was what I would definitely put in: a burgeoning romance between the pathologist and the aquaculturist/ Maine guide. 

This doesn't begin to cover the various motives - everyone wanted someone dead! - or the discussion over frying pan versus antique rifle as the murder weapon. Honestly, it wasn't a bad start to a book - I'd tackle it if I wrote as fast as Jenn or Rhys!

It definitely got my creative juices flowing, and I can highly suggest going to any similar event if one turns up near you. (The OLLI director was so impressed, she wants to make it a regular offering every semester.) I wish you all could have been there with us!